Feb. 6 (Bloomberg) -- Robert Boyd quit his job as a bank
assistant branch manager to start truck-driving school in
September. He graduated in December and landed work behind the
wheel of a rig at twice the pay.

Boyd saw opportunities in driving school ads on television,
articles in the paper and trucks filling the roads. He contacted
recruiters and enrolled at the Western Area Career & Technology
Center, about 25 miles southwest of his Pittsburgh home. Demand
for its graduates has climbed amid a national driver shortage
and a local shale-gas drilling boom that are both boosting
competition for drivers.

“Trucks are everywhere, especially on the main highways
around here,” Boyd said after earning the Class A commercial
driver’s license that helped him become an equipment operator
for an energy company. “I’m 38 and this is it for me. This is
how I’m going to retire.”

Boyd is riding a wave of job growth at trucking companies
as they post payroll increases at more than double the pace of
the nation’s workforce since the end of 2010. Demand is being
driven by the economic expansion, new regulations that cap
driver hours and rising turnover caused by long days and time
away from home.

The job-placement rate for the school in Canonsburg,
Pennsylvania, has never been higher, according to Joseph
Iannetti, the center’s director.

“There’s a constant demand,” said Iannetti, who has been
training drivers since 1978. “We place everybody we train, and
it’s never been like that before.”

Rising Wages

The average annual wage for U.S. heavy truck and tractor
trailer drivers rose to $39,830 in 2011, up 9.7 percent from
five years before, according to the most recent data available
from the Labor Department. Average hourly wages increased the
same amount during the period to $19.15.

From the end of 2010 through January, trucking companies
have boosted payrolls by 8.1 percent, or 102,900 jobs, more than
twice the 3.4 percent gain in overall employment, according to
Labor Department data released Feb. 1. During the 18-month
recession that ended in June, 2009, trucking jobs declined at
about double the rate of total payroll losses.

Analysts project more gains as the economy expands and
truckers face new limits on hours of service. The industry is
more than 125,000 drivers short of what it needs to meet demand,
according to FTR Associates, the Bloomington, Indiana-based
freight data and forecasting firm. The shortfall probably will
more than double at the end of this year to 259,000 drivers, the
biggest deficit in nine years, according to an FTR forecast.

‘Fast Enough’

“We’re projecting a continued slow growth in the economy
but that growth will be fast enough to keep truck freight
growing,” said Larry Gross, a senior consultant at FTR. He said
new regulations, which will start to be enforced in July, will
cut driver productivity and curb hours driven, resulting in a
“significant tightening of capacity.”

The U.S. Transportation Department last February cut the
maximum time drivers can remain on duty. Commercial truck
drivers can work 70 hours a week, down from 82 hours.

About nine in 10 long-distance carriers report that they
can’t find enough drivers, said Bob Costello, chief economist at
the American Trucking Associations Inc., the Arlington,
Virginia-based industry group. Annual employee turnover at
smaller trucking companies with less than $30 million a year in
revenue rose to a five-year high of 94 percent in the third
quarter, while larger rivals have a 104 percent rate, ATA data
show.

More Tonnage

The ATA’s For-Hire Truck Tonnage Index rose in December to
121.8, the second highest in four decades of history. The record
was 124.4 in December 2011. The gauge of tonnage hauled in the
U.S., based on surveys from members, has rebounded from a seven-year low of 100.2 in April 2009.

“We’re hauling everything from raw materials to finished
goods, so we’re the entire supply chain,” Costello said. “It’s
a great reflection of the tangible economy, everything that’s
manufactured, wholesaled and retailed. You can’t put services in
the back of a truck.”

Trucking shares rose to a record last month. The Bloomberg
U.S. Trucking Index of 24 companies including J.B. Hunt
Transport Services Inc. and C.H. Robinson Worldwide Inc. closed
at 125.12 on Jan. 28, the highest in almost two decades of
history after advancing 24 percent from last year’s low of
101.02 in August.

Listings for truckers showed the biggest increase last year
among 31 occupations, according to JobDig Inc., operator of the
LinkUp.com job search engine that matches drivers with
companies. The 12,472 new listings and 34,104 total positions
posted in the fourth quarter both more than tripled from first
quarter levels, according to data from the Minneapolis-based
firm, which tracks openings at 25,000 firms.

Signing Bonuses

JobDig Chief Executive Officer Toby Dayton said some
trucking firms are turning down business because of driver
shortages. They are paying higher salaries, offering signing
bonuses and paying for training, certification and licensing for
new drivers, he said.

“They know that wages are going to have to go up in this
area if they want to get their trucks on the road,” Dayton
said. “They literally have trucks sitting in lots that aren’t
moving and they’ve got to turn down jobs if they can’t get
drivers for 17 trucks that they have in St. Cloud, Minnesota.
There’s a very high level of frustration.”

Some companies are paying bonuses of as much as $5,000 for
drivers who stay for at least a year and are even starting their
own training programs, said Charles Clowdis, managing director
of transportation advisory services at IHS Global Insight in
Lexington, Massachusetts. He sees the need for recruits in
newspaper ads and on the air.

‘Many Columns’

“I judge by how many columns there are, and when it gets
up to one entire page the shortage is real,” said Clowdis, who
advises freight companies. “On any of the talk-radio stations
you get nothing but truck driver ads.”

Trucking firms are confronting a “quality-driver
shortage” made worse by workers leaving the job because of the
long hours and time away from home, which boosts demand for the
most experienced with clean driving records, according to
Tripper Allen, president of Group1201, a Marietta, Georgia-based
advertising firm that specializes in truck-driver recruitment.

Adding to the shortage is turnover because the “challenges
and sacrifices” of long hours and stress don’t make the
paycheck worth it, according to Todd Spencer, executive vice
president of the Grain Valley, Missouri-based Owner-Operator
Independent Drivers Association.

Being Home

Companies including Werner Enterprises Inc. are doing more
to retain drivers by keeping them closer to home. The Omaha,
Nebraska-based trucker, whose routes span North America from
Alaska to Mexico, gets about 70 percent of its drivers home once
a week, up from about one-third five years ago, said Werner
Chief Operating Officer Derek Leathers. That reduces the
extended trips that have been one of the biggest barriers to
retention in the industry, he said.

Yet he sees more challenges ahead in recruiting if there is
a sustained recovery in housing and construction, which both
pull workers from the same labor force as truckers.

“We could be faced with a very tight driver market before
the end of the year really depending on at what pace the economy
starts to recover,” said Leathers, a 22-year industry veteran
who started as a dispatcher and spent time as a recruiter.
“Drivers are becoming more and more of a scarce resource every
day.”

As a newly minted trucker, Boyd says joining the expanding
industry and learning the trade gave him a new respect for the
kind of work drivers do and their responsibilities.

“You just have a whole new appreciation for what these
guys go out and do on a day-to-day basis -- the complexity, the
safety,” Boyd said in a December interview. “You always have
to be on your toes. You can’t let your mind wander.”